Book Review: Alice Feiring's The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization
I've been looking forward to reading this book for some time now and I was both delighted and greatly surprised.
As much as I enjoyed the book, I had been totally mislead about the narrative line of Ms. Feiring's excellent manifesto and personal memoir. My understanding was that the book was about Ms. Feiring's long experience as a wine merchant.
I had heard that Ms. Feiring believes that wine should be first understood as an expression of soil through fermented grape juice and would begin her memoir of a tradesperson's life with a short manifesto on that expressive quality called terroir. Then, Feiring would takes us on an autobiography of her life as a wine merchant, starting with the opening of her Manhattan shop in 1978, from early misadventures and small-scale successes to the ferreting of significant discoveries far off the paths habitually beaten through France and Italy in particular.
Alice and her lover, Owl-Head, had a knack for finding the hitherto unknown, and she would narrate these discoveries with physical and social details that bring moments to vivid, sensory life. The period she chronicles was one of enormous developments in wine, from California through globalization, and she would write intelligently of the problems that came with progress. Yet neither the trade nor this title is romantic: Feiring would make clear in this book the hard, often unpleasant work of winemaking and its trade and the setbacks that are part of the process.
Turns out, I got it all wrong! The book I thought she was writing was actually written by importer Neal Rosenthal and is now available from Amazon. That book has a much different title and is called Reflections of a Wine Merchant. I ordered that book today from Amazon and am greatly looking forward to reading Mr. Rosenthal's book.
Alice Feiring's book, on the other hand, recounts her personal voyage through the wine world in the search for natural wines. This voyage often involves Owl-Head and other wacky characters. I found it a page-turner and compelling read and perhaps the most compelling work of literature since I read the Brothers Karamazov. You know, if Alice Feiring didn't exist, humanity would have invented her!
Unfortunately, I turn out to be a major character in this book and I feel a bit uncomfortable talking about the book and giving it the rave recommendations it so richly deserves. I can only hope that I am also featured in Neal Rosenthal's book -- wouldn't that be something?
return to: Joe Dressner The Wine Importer
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